Dear ENSFR members, the ENSFR is running an online event on 24.06.2025 with a selection of authors from the ENSFR who have released work recently. The event will take the form of four interviews, with the four authors C.D Rose, Ailsa Cox, Sonya Moor and Sue Dawes followed by Q and A.
Running time for the event.
6:00pm to 6:25pm — Ailsa Cox interview with Paul Knowles.
6:25pm to 6:50pm — Sonya Moor interview with Livi Michael.
Break 6:50pm to 7:00pm.
7:00pm to 7:25pm — C.D Rose interview with Laura Gallon.
7:25pm to 7:50pm — Sue Dawes interviewed by Emma Kittle-Pey
7:50pm to 8:00pm notices for ENSFR Members
Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_ZGMxNjdmZGYtNjQyMS00MTExLWI4YjAtMzU0OGVmNDBlMmM2%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22c152cb07-614e-4abb-818a-f035cfa91a77%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22250fe018-6207-427b-990c-acd1c951e6b3%22%7d
Information about the Authors
Ailsa Cox
Ailsa Cox is Professor Emerita in Short Fiction at Edge Hill University. Her stories have been widely published in magazines and anthologies and longlisted twice for the BBC National Short Story Award. Her mini-collection, Precipitation, with images by Patricia Farrell, is published by Confingo. The third edition of her book Writing Short Stories was also released in 2025. She has written books and essays on whole range of contemporary and twentieth-century short-story authors, including Alice Munro, Katherine Mansfield, Malcolm Lowry, Jon McGregor, Daisy Johnson and Tessa Hadley. Reading Alice Munro’s Breakthrough Books, co-authored with J. R. ‘Tim’ Struthers, Corinne Bigot and Catherine Sheldrick Ross, was published by EUP in 2024. Ailsa Cox is also the editor of the journal Short Fiction in Theory and Practice (Intellect Press), Associate Director of ENSFR and the founder of the Edge Hill Prize. She is based in Todmorden, West Yorkshire.
Precipitation
Set mostly in North West England, with excursions to Wales, Paris and the Arabian desert, the three long stories in Precipitation map the inner and outer world of their characters, excavating layers of time and memory. Two of the stories take place on the fictional street of Bethel Brow, where a grandmother nurses a long-held griev-ance, while two young incomers live the dream of a house in the country. In the third, the thwarted ambitions of a disappointed novelist take him on an imaginary journey. They hinge upon those small moments that can change your life forever – a missed train, a turn in the weather, or a puzzling encounter with a neighbour.
C.D Rose
C.D. Rose is the author of The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure, Who’s Who When Everyone Is Someone Else, The Blind Accordionist, Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea, and the forthcoming novel We Live Here Now. He holds a PhD in Critical and Creative Writing from Edge Hill University. Originally from Manchester, he has lived in many different places, but now lives in the north of England. He is currently working on a paratopian gazetteer of the Upper Calder Valley, and a musical.
Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea
Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea is a collection of nineteen pieces which tell the stories of forgotten photographers, lost travellers, missing writers and distracted philosophers, among others. The book was described as being (almost) ‘Kafka-esque’ by Michael Dirda in the Washington Post, and shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize in 2025.
Sonya Moor
Sonya Moor writes, reads and translates short fiction. Her translation of Albertine Sarrazin’s The Crib and Other Stories is published by Cōnfingō, as is her collection The Comet and Other Stories. Her stories are widely published in literary reviews and anthologies, including Best British Short Stories 2024 and Best British Short Stories 2022, and recognised for awards such as the Cinnamon Literature Award, Seán O’Faoláin International Short Story Competition and Bridport Short Story Prize. As a PhD candidate, she is researching word–image relations in hybrid short fiction. With Livi Michael, she coproduces Small Pleasures, the podcast about great short stories and greatness in the short story form.
www.sonyamoor.com.
The Crib and Other Stories, by Albertine Sarrazin, translated from the French by Sonya Moor is published by Confingo.
These short stories, which appear in English for the first time, were composed for the most part in prison, before Sarrazin’s novels were published to international acclaim in 1965. Here, Sarrazin turns her singular eye on the prison environment, charting the cruelties, small kindnesses, constraints and paradoxical freedoms of daily life in prison. By turns astute, tender and wryly humorous, Sarrazin presents a panorama ranging from the dangers of ‘favours’ and clandestine letters, to the delights of illicit coffee and self-imposed creative limits. Sarrazin’s stories swoop the quotidian into the epic, as officers, inmates, and alter egos play out, in the small world of the prison, their comédie humaine. Against this backdrop emerges Sarrazin’s own personal battle: to be, and express, herself.
Sue Dawes
Sue Dawes has a PhD in Creative Writing, with a focus on new ways to communicate gender in speculative fiction. She writes across genres: short stories, flash fiction, and experiments with Japanese short form poetry. When not writing, Sue teaches part-time at Essex University, is a freelance structural editor and mentor at The Writers Company, volunteers as a TEFL teacher with Exploring Educational Opportunities, and is a career.
The Mune
A GROUP OF VICTORIAN WOMEN, SHIPWRECKED ON AN ISLAND IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE, FIGHT FOR CHANGE.
Thirty “surplus” mothers from asylums, workhouses and the streets of Victorian England are shipwrecked on an island in an alternate universe. To survive, they must create a new society amid the lethal black sands and mysterious beasts. How will they shake off the patriarchal chains that bound them and raise their children to be free? How will Betty, who longs to be back under the guidance of her master, survive as the community evolves? And who is watching them?
